Guest view: An ugly society on display

This editorial was first published in The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, a fellow GateHouse Media publication. Guest editorials don't necessarily reflect the Daily Messenger's opinions.

Letting her political passions get the better of her, comedian Kathy Griffin recently found herself grimly facing a camera wielded by her friend Tyler Shields. In the resulting photo, she stood without expression, thrusting forward a mask of Donald Trump, dripping with fake blood.

It was an image that was reminiscent of cruel ISIS videos, in which extremists sawed the head of a hostage from his body and hoisted it for the camera.

Ms. Griffin’s stunt was intended to shock, and shock it did.

Including the president.

“Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself,” he tweeted Wednesday. “My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!”

The first lady and Barron’s mother, Melania Trump, called the image “very disturbing.” She added: “When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.”

It’s easy to mock the president for being thin-skinned, boastful and prone to tweet intemperately. But he was right about this.

Mr. Trump was joined in his condemnation by people of all political persuasions. Newscaster Anderson Cooper, who co-hosts an annual New Year’s Eve broadcast with Ms. Griffin, said he was appalled by the photo and called it “disgusting and completely inappropriate.” CNN fired Ms. Griffin from the show soon afterward.

Ms. Griffin, who initially defended the photo as a daring but defensible artistic statement, was surprised by the depth and width of the backlash. She apologized Wednesday afternoon.

“I crossed the line,” she said in a video she posted to Twitter. “I went way too far. The image is too disturbing. I understand how it offends people. It wasn’t funny. I get it. ... I beg for your forgiveness.”

In time, she may get it. But there is a bigger issue here than one celebrity’s poor judgment.

Our hyper-politicized society has grown much too coarse. People seem to forget that those they disagree with are human too.

Even in our polarized society, perhaps we can agree that propagating such a gruesomely suggestive, violent image — especially of a deeply controversial though duly elected president, whose very occupation requires Secret Service protection — is a bad idea.

That’s not to say Mr. Trump himself has not been grossly inappropriate at times. Mr. Trump has ignored the rules of common civility in many of his personally insulting tweets and seemed to urge supporters to punch the critics who appeared at his rallies.

Indeed, the whole culture seems to be descending into crudeness and ugliness rather than preserving a traditional view that people may have legitimate political disagreements. Political rallies have disintegrated into violent confrontations. Arsonists have set fires to mosques. Activists have threatened and attacked conservative speakers on campus, and destroyed property. Last month, a winning Republican candidate for Congress allegedly shoved a left-leaning reporter to the ground.

We can hope that Ms. Griffin’s suggestion of decapitating a president awakens us to the degenerate behavior our culture has been indulging. We’ve stomached a great deal over the past few years, but this photo of a fake beheading was too much.